ON THE MOVE: Goldman Snags New CTO; Stephens Hires Equities Trio

Traders Magazine Online News, October 10, 2017

John D'Antona Jr.

Goldman Sachs has hired Mike Blum, the former chief technology officer at KCG Holdings, the high-frequency trading firm recently acquired by Virtu Financial, as its CTO for its electronic trading unit. As part of his role, he will be responsible for setting standards for Securities Systematic Solutions, a newly created initiative that seeks to bring together all electronic trading efforts. He also held top tech jobs at Teza Technologies and Getco. Blum will report to Konstantin Shakhnovich, Umesh Subramanian and Raj Mahajan, according to an internal memo.

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BTIG announced Christopher Rollins has joined the firm as Managing Director and Head of U.S. Execution Services. Based in New York, he will focus on developing client solutions, and growing the firm’s U.S. institutional equity business. Rollins spent more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs in several key leadership roles. Most recently, he was a Managing Director and Co-Head of European Execution Services in London. Previously, Mr. Rollins spent more than a decade in the New York office, where he was a Managing Director in Institutional Equities, focused on executing cash equities and derivatives. Rollins will report to Richard J. Blank, Jr., Managing Director and Head of Global Equities, at BTIG.

Stephens, an independent financial services firm, is growing its New York Institutional Equities Sales and Trading team with the addition of three new hires - Greg Gaffney, Brett Katzner and Mike Pascarella – who all join as Managing Directors.

Pascarella has more than 20 years of institutional equity experience with his most recent position at Jefferies where he was a managing director of institutional equity sales. Previously,  Pascarella held positions at Echo Street Capital Management, Goldman Sachs and Mississippi Valley Advisors. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

Similarly experienced, Katzner is a former director of institutional sales at BTIG and a former vice-president at Thomas Wiesel Partners. He was a consumer analyst and portfolio manager earlier in his career.

Greg Gaffney has nearly two decades of experience in cross-asset sales, electronic trading and sales trading at Goldman Sachs.

The chief executive of Amsterdam-based Optiver has decided to retire, sparking the latest change at the top of one of the world's big high-frequency trading firms this year. He will be replaced by Jan Boomaars, the leader of its European business, who joined from Goldman Sachs in October 2015. Boomaars, a well-known name in trading circles, ran Goldman Sachs's European equities execution and clearing business before he left the bank. He will continue to run Optiver's European operations.

BGC Partners reported that Shawn McLoughlin is being appointed CEO of BGC Financial for the Americas region, effective immediately. McLoughlin brings to the role more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry.

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